---

Foreign Affairs and Defence

I am astonished and welcome the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I agree that we will have to take on very powerful lobbies, and in the United States the federal Government’s heavy subsidising of powerful interests to dump food on Africa and other parts of the world, but particularly on Africa, amounts to an investment by the US in the wealthiest to impoverish the very poorest in Africa. That is the effect of it, and likewise the dumping of genetically modified crops. The last WTO round collapsed, essentially because of a degree of unity that developed between Brazil, India and China, which led the poorest countries in the world, and that was a good thing, because had a deal been reached on the agenda that had been put down, it would have been very damaging to the poorest people around the globe. If we want to conquer poverty, we must make changes, and that means ending this subsidy of food dumping by Europe and the United States, supporting and promoting industrial development and job creation in the poorest countries in the world, and allowing a degree of protection of agricultural industries to continue in Africa, the Caribbean and other places so that they can develop themselves and eliminate their own poverty. It is not a simple process, but it requires a clear commitment by us. Therefore, if we go to the WTO linking arms with the worst elements of the EU and the United States, we will only set our faces against the poorest in the poorest countries of the world. If we are serious about conquering poverty, we must be prepared to pay the price for it as well. I hope that the Government are prepared to do that. I am conscious that I have gone on rather a long time, but I have taken a lot of interventions, and I have one final area to mention.